Help us welcome one of our writer friends (see what I did there?) …. Mariah Fredericks! She’s traveling today, so her comments depend on the kindness of the wifi on the train. But be patient … she’ll be here.

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Writer Friends

Writer friends—they’re the best. That person you can send the roughest draft of a chapter and they will tell you it’s awesome, amazing, so great—and yeah, it needs work. The one who cheerfully offers to kill that reviewer who called your book “meandering.” Who listens to your complaints about your publisher—because she knows, without question, you will do it for her. Because you have. Many times. And will again, gladly.

One of the most famous pair of writer friends is Edith Wharton and Henry James. Before writing The Wharton Plot, in which they both appear, I knew they were friends. But I didn’t know how wonderfully deep, complex and, at times, hilariously catty their friendship was. James was already “the master” of American literature when Wharton embarked on her literary career. At their first meeting, she wore a pink Doucet dress to impress him. “Do New York,” he commanded her; the city should be her subject because she knew it as few writers could.

They wrote to each other constantly, traveled together, and satirized each other in print. Like many good friends, they had their issues. She was constantly compared to him, which she found irritating. “The continued cry that I am an echo of Mr. James (whose books of the last ten years I can’t read much as I delight in the man)” left her “rather hopeless.” In turn, he resented her commercial success, her wealth, and her boundless, at times bullying, energy. “She uses up everything and everyone.”

In times of crisis, she did rely on him heavily. When she was in the grip of toxic love affair, she used him as cover, having him travel with her and her lover to create the semblance of propriety. She confided in James, trusting him with details of her life that could have ruined her if they became public. “Live in the day,” he advised. “Don’t borrow trouble and remember that nothing happens as we forecast it.” When she was finally coming to terms with the fact that she should leave her husband, she consulted James. He noted that she was “in…rags, but as sublime and insurpassable as ever.”

In turn, she worked tirelessly to secure him a measure of financial security, campaigning unsuccessfully for him to win the Nobel Prize. In 1911, when James was despondent over the loss of his brother and the poor reception of a collection of his life’s work, she solicited funds for a “tribute” to him. James was embarrassed and outraged—and told her so in no uncertain terms. “My trip has been completely poisoned by Henry’s letter,” she wrote a friend. “There is nothing on earth I valued so much as his affection. I can never get over this.”

But she did and he did. In 1913, she arranged for Scribner’s to pay James a handsome advance, which she herself paid for. James never found out, but he never finished the book. He died on February 28, 1916. Edith wrote historian Gaillard Lapsley, “Let us keep together all the closer now, we few who had him at his best.”

Writer friends—let us keep together always.

What makes someone a good writer friend? If you have a good story to share about your book writing bestie, share in the comments.

Mariah Fredericks was born, raised, and still lives in New York City. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history. She is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, which has twice been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her historical standalone, The Lindbergh Nanny, was nominated for the 2023 Anthony and Agatha, as well as the Macavity Sue Feder Memorial Award. Her latest novel, The Wharton Plot, released on January 23, 2024.

To order THE WHARTON PLOT from an independent bookstore, click here

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To visit my website, go to mariahfredericksbooks.com